A 2020 Pew survey showed 48 percent of adults globally, and about the same share of Americans, believed GMOs were unsafe to ingest. Half of the global population had been conditioned to think emerging biotechnology products are a threat to health—with no evidence. It is hard to imagine this popular prejudice has not played a meaningful role in vaccine hesitancy.

Why would people reluctant to ingest a genetically engineered vegetable not also be more reluctant to inject a genetically engineered virus, ? Why would those wary of decades-old biotechnology embrace months old methods?

It’s no coincidence that Japan, where health authorities that pandered to biotechnophobia in the ’90s with bans on GMO crops and measles, mumps and rubella vaccines, now has one of the lowest vaccine trust rates in the world.

The European Union has been similarly haunted by its early and aggressive attacks on GMOs, shaped in large part by the father of the anti-biotech movement, Jeremy Rifkin, who has served as a senior adviser to three EU presidents. In June of 2020, Brussels had to place a moratorium on erroneous GMO regulations that were hampering vaccine development, an ironic juxtaposition to its five-year moratorium on GM crops between 1999 and 2004.